His men had already ransacked every room, and in their anxiety to find the more distinguished inhabitants of the chateau, allowed the domestics to escape; but few of them had been in bed, and even they were overlooked in the anxiety of the troopers to find M.de Lescure.

They did not dream that any warning could have been given to the chateau, nor could they conceive it possible that at three o'clock in the morning the royalists should have been up, and ready for instant flight.

It was not till nearly five that they satisfied themselves that neither de Lescure nor his wife, nor any of his family were in the house; and then, at the command of their General, they commenced the work of destruction.
The troopers got hay and straw from the farm-yard (not without some opposition from the loose bull,) and piled them in every room in the chateau; they then took the furniture, beds, curtains, wearing apparel, and every article of value they could find, and placed them in heaps, in such a way as to render them an immediate prey to the flames.

They did the same to the barns and granaries, in which there were large stores of corn, and also to the stables, in which stood the horses and cattle; the bull, which Francois had loosened, was the only animal about the place that did not perish.

Having systematically prepared the chateau and out-houses for a huge bonfire, they put a light to the straw in various places, and re-mounting their horses, stood around it till they saw that no efforts which the peasants might use could extinguish the flames.